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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CleverName" data-source="post: 582545" data-attributes="member: 2591">Adventure 5The Cloaca* MonologuesAn unsent letter to Malcolm the Cimbri's Half Brother Mallory (Remi Truer)Mallory,Remember that big purple whorehouse I told you we were trying to sneak into? Well, our group infiltrated it not once, not twice, but three times in the past day. First we wanted to send in a slightly more expendable guy to do some snooping and check if they any special magic detection set up. We didn't really know where to start, so we went back to that creep Kedward's place to see if he knew a junky or someone we could use. The little imp of his did another little nudie dance, but I swallowed my creep's and acted polite and what.Kedward gave us the skinny on some poor addict named Forsetti, gave us a bag of whatever the poor schlub was hooked on, and sent us on our way. Nice and easy. Guy's way too nice to us, though, claims he just doesn't want his business taken over like the Porphyry House moved in on whoring. I don't really wanna’ hang around him if we do manage to bring the House down.Anyway, Brone scraped Forsetti off the floor of the Ogre, put an invisibility spell on him, and sent him on his way. An hour later we met the puke in the Plaza of Hanging Ruins and got the general layout of the place, and a couple clues of where to look, some passages downstairs, a couple rooms upstairs, and Wolvera's (the proprietress of Porphyry) office. He also said the statues seemed to act as guards, and looked around when he entered a room, but could not see him. We gave him his bag of treats, and he ran off. Hope we never see that waste again.We had to plan our next move, and it came down to me and Gann doing another search of the place, filling in the blanks of Forsetti's little description. I was a little worried, my luck hasn't been the best lately, and I might not have been a lot of good in a fight, but I just put on the game face, talked a little louder, and we were off.We checked out the bottom level first, searching the smaller rooms, trying to keep quiet. We didn't see much, had a couple close shaves with the servants and madams almost bumping into us, until we got to the third or fourth door down one of the halls Forsetti hadn't scouted. Two of the male servants we’d seen came down the hall dragging this big guy, he was saying how sorry he was -- already looked like he had been worked over by them. Must have roughed a girl up or something. Anyway, they tie him to an upright bed or post, I couldn't really see that much through the keyhole, and one of the servants turns into a snake! The other one picks up the snake, which then bites the customer, and he just dies. Then the first guy reappears, and they're all laughing. I hadn't completely believed Brone, but there you go, transforming snakes.So we head upstairs to look around, a little freaked out. Gann took the 'detect secret doors' potion, and we found one that lead behind the swank upstairs room, complete with hidden doors into each of the rooms! We also found a door that looked like it went down. I just managed to pick the lock, but our invisibility spell was almost over and we decided to head back out, confident that we had the elements of a plan in front of us. In hopes that it would help me pick the lock again, I poured a little oil of slipperiness into the lock and then closed the door. On the way out I must have tripped or something, because suddenly one of statues started following us down the stairs. Wolvera was down there, too, and said some words. All the plants in the lobby came to life and tried to grab us. We got through the door, I tapped Makar, who was waiting in the lobby, on the shoulder, and we were out.Obviously, we needed to get into a room upstairs, sneak along the secret passages behind the room, and get back to the secret passage with the lock. Many jokes were made, but we finally settled on a ruse that revolved around watching Copoc… the less said the better. But we needed 2500 gold at a minimum to get a room up there, and our finances were sort of low at the moment. Another visit to Kedward was needed.Kedward bought our remaining vials of Demon's Breath, giving us the money we needed and some antitoxin as well. We threw our weapons into Makar's magic bag, and set off for a third time to Porphyry House, keeping one or two out, so as not to arouse suspicion. We got into a room with a girl, no problem. Again, the girl ended up looking almost exactly as we described in our “fantasy” to the Madame. She was willing and passive — all of this just made us uneasier as to what was really going on in here. Brone cast Detect Magic on her and said there was a Transformation-type spell on her, but she wasn't a Yuan-Ti. Time was running out thought, so we tied her up, blocked the door into the room, got into the passage, and I managed to get the lock undone, and we were into the secret lair.There were three chests in the room directly behind the locked secret door, but everyone else wanted to explore before looking into the chests, so we left them. Brone went first down the stairs, and I was behind him, the others followed behind me. At the bottom of the stairs, as Brone came off the staircase, there was a flash of light under his foot, and he was frozen. Almost immediately two lines of acid shot out at the frozen Brone and covered him. Copoc threw a Haste spell on me and we all moved into the room.I'd like to say that the 5 Green Kulkans and 2 Black Kulkans were worthy adversaries, but we mopped them up with very little trouble. Brone was worse for wear because of the acid blasts the Black Kulkans hit him with, but Copoc healed him up pretty easily. I even got replaced the longspear I had given up at the weapon check required in the lobby of Porphyry house. Now that I had a chance to look around, it looked like the room we were in was a holding area of some kind -- there are iron rings set into the walls. There are four doors in the room and two hallways leading out. One corridor heads north and is blocked by a portcullis with a locked wench. The second corridor, the one the Kulkans retreated into, suddenly stops in a dead end after about 25 feet. I can hear some muffled noises coming from beyond the wall…_________________________________________________* clo·A·ca: The common cavity into which the intestinal, genital, and urinary tracts open in vertebrates such as fish, reptiles, birds, and some primitive mammals.GM’s NOTE:This is a prime example of the danger of combining high school biology and the base humor of gamers. Put lizard folk in the party and mix that with a lot of reptilian baddies and someone has to bring up the physiological differences between mammals and our reptile friends.  You would be surprised how often cloacae can be worked into a conversation, pop culture references, and insults…okay, well, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised…</blockquote>

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